


the WOW! signal

by wtfmulder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, F/M, Paranoia, Smut, manic behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 05:36:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11029734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfmulder/pseuds/wtfmulder
Summary: After Little Green Men, Mulder wonders if there isn't something somewhere else.





	the WOW! signal

“South America, Scully.”  
  
Mulder’s apartment is dark but not dark, and messy but not dirty, and the pieces of him he’s splattered all over like decorative brain matter are simple but never plain, not by any means. His fish are carefully selected from quality breeders, his couch lifted from a Charlottesville curb. The books are all absolute nonsense. The art is charming in a dubious way, and Mulder is dubious in a charming way. Models and diagrams and framed posters are so out of date or so far from earthly realization it makes her nervous to be in a place so different than what it’s like in her brain, like worshipping at the altar of the wrong god. And God help her, she likes it. She likes being in it. She likes that she has a key. But she’s never here for a good reason. She’s never here because she likes to be.

“Excuse me, Mulder?” South America, Scully. It’s the first thing he says to her. Not even, Hey.

“Twin studies in Brazil,” he says, almost dazedly, smacking the file against the back of his hand. “Genetic testing in Argentina, genome mapping, just like we saw with Dr. Berber. Only they might testing purity control on more humans, children taken by the regime during the seventies and eighties to be used as lab rats. Samantha,” he says her name too loud, like a revelation, the syllables twisting his lips in strange directions and agitating his face. “Samantha could be one of those children. I’ve been looking in the wrong place.” 

“Why on earth would they be keeping her in Argentina?” Scully asks, alarmed. “Research into the human genome spans worldwide. It’s a stretch to assume they’d take her there.”

He ignores her completely. It’s like she hadn’t said a word; he even begins to talk over her. “And the sightings, Scully, you would not believe the action they get. Multiple low-hanging sightings over Colombia. Craft digs in Peru. Ancient stone work in Puma Punku so intricate and detailed that it could not possibly have been done by the earliest civilization known to exist. You said it yourself, I need proof, and it’s _all there_ , in South America.”

“You don’t even know Spanish,” she says weakly.

Annoyed, he waves her off. “I’ll learn it.”

“How will you survive? How are you going to get a job, Mulder?”

She’ll talk him out of this. There are some practicalities even Mulder can’t bring himself to shirk. Prone to flights and fancy and especially partial to the combination, Mulder is dangerous with the seed of a new idea, too good at cultivating it. He grows world records out of them before channeling Gallagher to express his rage. She just needs to coax that out of him before he does something stupid, like actually booking the flight. She tries to look less concerned than she really is.

“Money won’t be an issue.” At her confused expression he shakes his head, tight-lipped and evasive. “It won’t, Scully. I won’t need a job.”

“Where will you live, then?” Mulder doesn’t answer. “Mulder?” 

“I’ll have a place,” he says. And then he says, unphased, “I thought about not telling you.”

A chill runs down her spine. He moves on, pitching his theories, his claims growing more bizarre with the passing minutes. Pyramids built from four hundred ton blocks, unidentified cranial remains straddling the Pacific Ring of Fire, malformed faces carved into mountains and trees and buildings underwater, ancient accounts of flying objects obscuring the sun and entire tribes going missing. He pitches and pitches and does not wait for her to step up to bat. She’s not sure she could.

Her worry is ice in her blood.

Cutting through the whir of his incessant monotone is a timeline, in her head, of points during their partnership where she was well and truly worried for him, for his sanity. She comes to the conclusion it had never been quite like this. Some of his newer claims are ones he’d previously vehemently disputed. Some pass for being picked straight from the madhouse. All of them are too much. All of them are much too much.

“Mulder,” she says slowly, just as he says, “My flight leaves tomorrow and all of the preparations have been made. I wanted to say goodbye and –”

“You _cannot_ do this,” Scully chokes on a sob building in her chest, as blood pumps like a bursting dam in her veins.

“–to thank you Scully, for your unwavering support and for hearing me out even when I know you at times fear for my sanity. Your maddening need for proof, while frustrating and –” he registers what she’s said and shakes his head, firmly. “I am doing this. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. Your maddening need for irrefutable evidence has frustrated me indescribably and I have no doubt I have similarly frustrated you. But knowing you has made me a better investigator, and I want you to know that you are the finest agent who’s ever had the distinct _un_ pleasure to work with me.” He steps forward to cup her dampened cheek and, softly, so very fondly, he murmurs, “I’ll miss you, Scully.” 

She can’t stop the tears from falling as she tries to figure out what the hell is happening, what the hell just _happened,_ and Mulder makes a distressed noise in the back of his throat and pulls her unresponsive body in for a tight hug.

“You’re going to get yourself hurt,” she whispers loudly, angrily, into his soft cotton tee. He makes another noise and hugs her closer.

“You know I have to do this,” he whispers back. He strokes her neck the wrong way, pulling the skin taut. “There’s no other way. I’ve considered it all, and this is what I’m left with. After everything that happened… everything I’ve found, and lost.” He pulls back so she can look at his face, brushing a wet lock of hair from her cheek. “I have to go on.”

“What makes you think it will be any different there?” She pleads, clutching fistfuls of his shirt. “That they won’t just follow you? As much as you loathe it you were protected by the protocol you consistently thwarted. 

“I guess… I don’t know it will be any different there,” he replies. “But I have to try.”

She checks his head for injuries and he lets her. She checks his temperature and he lets her. She overstays her welcome and he lets her do nothing but keep still as he flutters about, pulling files from his desk, from boxes in his bedroom, packing them neatly into a large open suitcases on the floor.

“What about your fish?” She sniffs, crossing her arms. She feels like a child. She is a child, in the scheme of things. She should be happy to cut her losses. Already the files are putting her at more risk than she’d signed up for at the Bureau, and that is quite the fea.. She could live with herself. She could live without him, without the answers… could live in the dark, knowing there is more out there than what’s been taught to her, what she’s devoted her life to, but never being able to explore it…

No, she couldn’t. She’s seen too much.

Mulder turns back to her, cocking his head. “Why, you want ‘em? I was going to hand them over to the gunmen but you’d take better care of them. They’re yours if you want.”

“No,” she says. He shrugs and returns to his packing. This goes on for some time. Then, “You’re going to die there, Mulder.”

He is quiet, hunched over his bags, his face shadowed in thought, faraway and distant as she’s ever seen it. She doesn’t want to know what it’s like in his head. There’s nothing there that’s good for her, nor him, not right now.

“I might.”

In the resulting silence Scully uses the time to look at his apartment, look for signs. She can’t tell what’s clutter and what’s depression. She can’t tell if he keeps it this dark on purpose or if the lighting’s just bad. Does he ever sleep in his bedroom? Does he buy coffee or bring home women or take uppers to keep him steady for the job? Is he turning in his resignation letter in the morning, or just leaving behind his empty apartment in warning, Don’t Come After Me? Mulder never gives her anything but questions and headaches.

Off-balance, lightheaded, for once in her life unable to consider the next step, she finds herself pulling things out of place and putting them where they might go if they were ever thought about enough to go anywhere. Or maybe they were thought about too much, and Mulder always kept them out to reexamine them. Books on the shelf leaning sideways get turned upright, the couch cushions are realigned, and behind her Mulder just pulls more things out of spots to put in new spots.

“Have you told your parents about your little plans?” She huffs, shuffling and neatly stacking a pile of papers on the coffee table. He snorts. “Your friends?” She’s about to grab an ornament on his desk and lob it at his head when she sees it, and it stops her right as her fingers close around heavy bronze. “Are you _kidding_ me?” She asks, snatching up the bag and lifting it to his questioning glance. “What are you doing with this?"

“I should think that’s obvious,” he says, clearly amused.

“Why do you have an entire ounce of cannabis, Mulder, if you’re leaving tomorrow?”

“Do you really want me to explain it to you?”

“You shouldn’t be smoking weed, not with your…” Condition. Because he clearly has one.

“I’m a free man now, no fibs, no Fibbies. You going to arrest me, Scully?”

She thinks about it.

“Where did you get this?” She shakes it in the air again and the buds play clunker games in the bag. He doesn’t answer. “Have you been doing this the entire time I’ve known you? Have you been getting high on the job?”

“Getting high on the… no, jesus Scully,” he mutters, standing up to snatch it all back from her. “I just got it today, the guy brought it over with all of the…” he trails off, purses his lips and shoves it in a desk drawer.

“All of the what, Mulder?” He gives a slight shake of his head, drop it Scully. “All of the _what_?”

“He’s a respected man in my field,” what Mulder’s field is, she’ll never know, “With my interests, who brought my attention to–” and he doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.

“The man who sold you this,” Scully says lowly, voice cracking. “Is the same man who tipped you on everything in South America. You are uprooting your life on the word of a drug dealer.” If she can just bring him into another argument…

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” It’s assured, final, almost blissful. Glad to be rid of her, glad to be rid of anything that doesn’t support his skewed vision of how the world works (against him). There’s a dreamlike quality to his voice, though, that makes it different. Tempers her anger. Plays with her head.  
  
Other things she notices: he only has one picture on his desk, him and Samantha. No dust on the baseboards. He’s cleaned, recently, cleaned well, and it hits her just how lemony fresh everything is, and the squeaky brightness of the tank. The phone cord has been pulled from the wall. The sockets have been gutted, rearranged, the light fixtures are missing, the bulbs cracked open in the wastebasket by his desk. A lone standing lamp provides all the room’s light, and it’s just as dim and tremulous as the situation itself. Mulder has always had that excavation gear, she tells herself, and all of those random packages. She ignores crumpled up receipts and brand new tags.

She whips to face him again. “What about everything we’ve seen here? All of the truths we uncovered?”  
  
“We haven’t uncovered anything, Scully. Just more questions.”  
  
“How can you say that after…” and when she can’t think of a single instance of evidence, of something tangible, something she herself would require in order to believe her own story, she destroys this line of thinking. But nothing else comes to her mind, either. She’s not naive enough to bring herself into this. They’re not exactly the best of friends.  
  
“You’re really worried, aren’t you?” Scully is too busy gnawing on her bottom lip and playing with her necklace to notice that he’d zipped up one of his bags and is now staring at her, curiously. What a stupid, thoughtless thing to ask. They’re not great friends but she’d stood by him, hadn’t she, defended him, paraded him, even, like a scarlet A on her chest, chucked her career into the Potomac, traded in her social life for quarantine after quarantine and – damn it, why shouldn’t she matter? Why wouldn’t she be worried?   
  
“You must think very little of me,” she says, keeping her voice straight and clutching the cross so tightly in her hand it cuts, “If you have to even ask that.” He gives a short jerk of his head, and stands up to look for something. “What are you doing?” she asks warily, growing tired of his ping-pong-ball movements. He’s hit every corner of the apartment since she’s been here and shows no sign of stopping. But he’s reaching into his desk again and he’s pulling out… oh no.   
  
“We’re going to smoke this pot, Scully,” he says, matter of fact. She glares at him and he smiles innocently, tearing open the ziploc and pushing his nose in it. He breathes in deeply, cringes, and reaches back to pull out a little glass bowl. How very Boy Scout of him.

“Mulder, regardless of whether you go through with this or not– “ he looks at her sadly, and she ignores it. “The point still remains that I will continue to be an agent with the FBI. I cannot just–”  
  
“When’s the last time you were ever drug tested?” At her silence, he adds: “I just get the feeling you’re not their first choice for random pee tests, Scully.”

“Maybe you should have been,” she spits.  
  
“Nothing in my pee but fast food and orange juice.” He keeps his eyes on hers when he sits down on the couch in front of her, patting the spot next to him. “Scully, this is…”  
  
“Madness? A mistake? Baby’s first psychological meltdown?”  
  
“The last time we’ll see each other,” he finishes, dipping his chin. “I consider you my friend. I don’t want to hurt you.”   
  
She doesn’t like his tone, how it borders on piteous. “It’s not me you should be worrying about.”   
  
“We’ll calm down. We’ll calm down, we’ll hang out, and then we’ll say goodbye. C’mon, Scully. When have we ever hung out?”

When have you ever said no to me?  
  
Scully hasn’t. She never has said no to him. “Mulder…”   
  
“You were right. I can’t bring this on the plane. It’s, uh, been awhile since I partook. I overestimated how much I needed.” And he sounds so much like himself, there…  
  
He packs the bowl, stuffs it too high and they cash out early. She does the next one, ripping up the bud with her precise fingers, her sharp nails. She packs it too loose. They take their hits in relative silence and cough from the unfamiliarity and forget to hold the carb and burn themselves with the lighter. It would be dishonest, somehow, to attempt a conversation, real or genial. Occasionally she’ll burst out into controlled explosions of high-pitched laughter, and he’ll watch her, glassy-eyed, and smile back. When their bodies slow, and their eyelids begin to droop, and the edges of the world blur into something softer, they sit back with their hands over their stomachs and listen to the gurgle of the fish tank.

“Oh, Mulder. Why are you doing this?” She asks. “Giving up. That’s what you’re doing.”

“I’m not giving up.” His arm rests along the back of the couch, and his fingertips just barely brush her shoulder. His words are half spoken into his bicep, where he’s pressed his cheek against it. “I’m closer than ever before.”

“Fox Mulder,” she sighs, loudly and from the depths of her heart. “You are a glutton for punishment, and a terrible martyr. I’ve come to accept this as your suicide letter, only I got to read it before you made the jump.”

“You’re so sure I’m wrong. How would it happen, then?” He doesn’t lift his face from his arm. “How am I gonna die?”

“I don’t know, Mulder, you could…” her head lolls back and hits the wall and she licks her bottom lip. “Die of dysentery on some abandoned mountainside, because you didn’t heed the warnings about the drinking water.” He hums thoughtfully. “Or maybe you’ll be ambushed by pseudo-government officials who decide you’re asking too many questions. But most likely you’ll get shot, senselessly, violently, in a manner that has nothing at all to do with your quest. You can’t speak Spanish. No one would help. That’s probably what will happen.” Her stomach clenches in hunger and, dimly, horror at what she’s just said.

“That would probably be it,” he agrees. “That’s not much different than what’s waiting for me here.”

I’d save you here, you oblivious jerk. Oh, god. He’s really leaving isn’t he? He’s going to leave her here to run off and get himself killed. She sniffs.

“Don’t cry, Scully,” Mulder frowns. “If I die why cry,” he says, suddenly shooting up from the couch. “Hey, Scully. Try not to cry if I die, don’t ask why –”

“Mulder?” She lifts her head from the cushion and stares at him blearily, as he laughs to himself and spouts off some more. Rhymes that make too much sense and rhymes that make no sense at all, but she’s fixated on die. Die. Time is only measurable in the space between her heartbeats, but no space exists, just the constant haphazard thrum of her blood pumping to the tune of die, die, die, Mulder’s going to die. It hurts to breathe. Maybe from the smoke? “Mulder–” more wordplay, she slams her eyes shut. “Mulder, would you _stop_?”

He stops. Okay. She takes a deep breath and when she opens her eyes, he’s looking at her with mild curiosity and reaching out to touch her, his fingers brush her hair and comb it away from her forehead. They come back slightly damp with her sweat 

“Don’t be mad at me, Scully,” he says softly. She is mad. She tells him she isn’t. “I have to do it,” he says, as if that makes it okay. He shifts closer to her and for a moment her whole world is tilted and it feels like she’ll topple over, but it’s really just him sinking into the cushion, and her sinking into him. “I have to do it. I have to find my sister.”

“Nothing else matters,” she giggles, despite herself. He giggles with her and nods his head, grabbing her hand and holding it between his own.

“Yeah, Scully,” he agrees, looking down and playing with her fingers. She watches him distantly as he separates then and presses them together before linking them with his own. “Nothing else matters.”

A beat later, Mulder loses his mind. “Scully, go with me,” he says suddenly, and then there’s no oxygen in the room.

“What did you just say?” She chokes out, digging her fingernails into his knuckles. He doesn’t seem to notice or care. Where did the floor go?

“You can tell me I’m wrong in a different language.”

“That’s not…”

“We’d have each other’s backs, like Arecibo.” He stops in the middle of his rapid speech and stares at her like she’s grown a new head, like _she’s_ the crazy one, a billion questions written on his face. “You came all the way to Arecibo.”

It hits her then how terribly stupid of her that was, reminds her of Mulder recklessly tumbling their car over lushy secret hills and screaming at her to help him haul a body out of the country like it was something they just do. She rips her hand from his grasp.

“No,” she says, and hopes it sounds as mean as she feels. The fish tank casts trippy shadows behind his head and gives him a slight halo. She would also push him from heaven, if she were God. He’d be too bored up there.

Two wet circles on his face are shiny black, government issued gunmetal, and she looks right down the barrel. She doesn’t know what he’s going to do or say, if he’s going to kick her out and jump on the plane right after just to spite her. Instead he folds over to poke her in the rib. “Just kidding,” he says as she squirms away from his touch. He pokes her again.

 “Knock it the hell off, Mulder,” she mutters, still fogged up from the question. He nods. He pokes her again. She groans and drops her head back, closing her eyes. The movement shifts the world on its axis and she could fall asleep like this, getting prodded at like a dead body. She feels like a dead body and Mulder’s always been the boy with the stick. 

His poking stops. Shadows pass over her eyelids and she imagines him hovering over her, sucking in her air. “If I had asked again, Scully, would you have said yes?” Scully doesn’t answer him, keeps her eyes closed. “Okay. I won’t ask again.” 

And he kisses her instead. Her eyes snap open to find him there, just kissing her. He doesn’t move his lips. “I’m not going,” she whispers against his mouth. He nods and presses their lips together more firmly. His are chapped and too used to being the biggest thing in the room. He mouths all the lipstick off of her, and licks the seam of her grimace before meeting her tongue with his own.   
  
Maybe she was wrong. His nose nudges at her cheek and his breath flits across her skin like little ants. Maybe he has some  brain condition that will drop him dead on a roadside somewhere in Ecuador and his body will be returned to the earth through  bugs. A car wreck in an overcrowded city. Powers that spared him here but could quite plausibly follow him, take him down without so much as a whisper. She imagines it all vividly as he kisses her. When she tenses, he pulls back a little and rubs her shoulders.

“Mmmphm, partner,” he licks his lips still pressed to her own, and then he drags the flat of his tongue down her chin. “Not-partner.”

 “Partner,” she breathes shakily, pulling him into another, deeper kiss. He nods in agreement and bites down on her bottom lip, and with his body he urges her into the corner of the couch so that her head lay on the pillow.

The severity of her reactions catches her off guard. You can’t, she supposes, truly know how hot you are for someone until they’re pulling you out of your clothes. And she’s thought about this. Oh, has she thought about this. Mulder is strong, knobby-boned, his eyes are kind. She loves his jaw, how it sets and ticks and grinds for her. His body. The broadness of his chest, the way it crowds her when he gets too close, how he smells… like books, like cheap aftershave, like rye bread, because he’s always eating it, like salt and formaldehyde and bile. Maybe her senses are just heightened and she only thinks she can pick up on all that, or maybe she’s just noticed over time. His arms and legs and the bump in his nose. Yes, it’s possible she’s noticed. 

His hands are warm when they inch up her shirt, and she swears she can feel his fingerprints on her skin, the loops of them, their ridges, their bifurcations. Evidence that he was here. She can take the powder and brush them over and turn them in when word gets out about his disappearance. I’ve got a clue, Assistant Director Skinner, with her shirt pulled up and her belly exposed. Where should we look?

And it’s the sleepiest kiss she’s ever had, the slowest, like he’s trying to give her the impression it could really last forever. She is so far from that kind of ignorant she wants to laugh at the thought. Nothing about this changes anything. Do not forget that. His tongue is in her mouth and his dick is nudging at her hip and he will be leaving in the morning. At least he’s giving her a pleasant farewell.  
  
She is… calm. And dazed, and wet as water, underneath him, as an understanding moves through her, as she begins to know this man better than she ever did before. She tries to follow after him when he tears his lips away, but he shushes her and drags her shirt over her head. He’s too slow with her bra, so she helps him. She’s too slow with her bra. They both chuckle breathlessly in each other’s mouths until she finally unhooks it, tosses it somewhere by the coffee table. Her jeans and her underwear follow suit.  
  
His pulpy mouth on her reminds her of oranges, squeezing down around the flesh and letting the juices drip through her fingers. He skims it down her neck, suckles at her collarbones, down, down, down. He kisses her belly button three times like he’s making a wish, and then he’s sinking off of the couch onto his knees, bringing her legs over his shoulders and settling on the floor.  
  
“Have you thought about this?” He asks, gently combing at her slick curls, brushing them out of the way. The way he stares makes her stomach drop. It’s unnerving, how focused he can get. Unhealthy. She likes it. 

“Hmmm. I bet you have,” he says playfully, opening her with his thumbs. He bites his lip and growls real low at the sight of her, brushes his index finger over her swollen clit. “I have.”

She squeaks when he rubs at her more firmly, feeling the heat of his gaze weighty as a body on top of her. His touch is languid and exploratory, the weed having seemed to slow him down just a bit, and his voice no longer puts her off balance. It’s rough and thick, a touch of teasing amusement decorating the edges. 

“It surprised me when I started thinking of you like this,” he says. He appears to be lost in his thoughts, muttering to himself (more rhymes? What is that?) and dipping a finger into her opening to wet the tip, dragging it back up to her clit. “You’re not really my type.”

Her breath catches, the flush of something not entirely sexual starting at base of her neck. That stung. It cuts through her high like a scalpel and a thread of sobriety gets stitched into her thought processes. A prickly pain blooms all through her skin. This is wrong, she thinks. Wrongwrongwrong. And he makes it worse.

“Shorter, more contrary.” And her body responds even as the embarrassment makes her want to cry. “More like a friend without the friendliness. More like a sis–”

“That is _enough_ ,” she chokes thickly, willing her limbs to pick her up and take her the hell out of here. She manages to sit up straight despite her head sitting like a bowling ball on her neck and pushes past panic and hurt to try and wiggle away, to hide. 

“You’re misunderstanding me,” he says. He holds her legs apart as she tries to close her knees, scooting up closer so his torso traps her open. “Listen to me, Scully–”

“Your god’s gift to women then?” She laughs crazily, shoving at his shoulders. Jesus. What was she thinking? Mulder is a special type of prick, she’s known that from the beginning. Let him, then. Let him screw off to South America and get shot executioner style for his trouble, never to be found again. She claws at his hands on her thighs but they’re strong and she’s weak, pillowy, her mind’s not working right. She’s hit with a wave of general uselessness and she slumps back in the cushions, not before shielding herself from his view with cupped hands. 

“No, the opposite,” he shakes his head frantically, voice cracking, that loud, too-fast train chugging quality returning to it. “I’m saying – Scully – that came out wrong. I’m stoned out of my head – I’m saying, fuck.” He leans forward again, resting his weight in his hands on the floor and crawls back between her legs like a peasant, a dog, a penitent. He kisses and bites around her hands and asks her again and again to not hate him.

“Have to go,” he mumbles around her tender flesh in his teeth. “Gotta, Scully. Gottagogottago gotta leave.” She falls back open to him and looks at the ceiling. It’s like he’s having a panic attack down there and it’s flowing through her. She blinks back tears, runs her fingers through his hair, and tries not to think about a bullet hole in the parts of his skull she’s caressing. 

“You’ve rewired me.” He takes a shaky breath and nuzzles her cunt, shuddering in relief. Is this a fix, she wonders sleepily. Is this a thing for him? Does he get laid on the regular and hide it like he hides everything else from her, and she found out, like she always does? Is he seeing anybody? That’s an unwelcome thought even though it’s never stopped her before. She spirals, and spirals, down parts of her brain she never wanted to venture to, while he nips at her labia and tells her how much he wants her. 

“I second guess myself,” he admits, sitting back on his knees to free his hands. “I trust you, even when I don’t trust myself.” And maybe he’s sensed she’s finally relaxed, because he slips a finger inside of her and plants a wet kiss to her kneecap. “Listen to the Arecibo tapes when I’m gone.” He adds another finger to work her open. “I sound like a lunatic, Scully.”

“And this is you being normal?” She gasps, completely serious, completely overwhelmed. He mock-rolls his eyes, ha ha, Scully, fucks her extra hard for that one.

He babbles and worships her for much too long, and every second of the way she feels like she’s going to burst, and then she feels like she’s been deflated. You changed me, Scully, but you’re going to be okay. You’re going to be… that’s good. That’s so good… you knew this was going to… temporary… better off… your degrees, your experience, you’re going to make that noise again before I leave. 

“Yeah,” he nearly snarls, watching his fingers disappearing inside of her with increasing speed, the noises so obscene she feels guilty. He licks his lips and demands, “Tell me what you’re going to do, Scully.”

Why does he insist on talking? He’s not any good at it. She considers ignoring the request, spreading her legs to perhaps further distract him. She wonders how she looks like right now, so open for him, so slick and stretched and needy despite the occasional shock of impending doom.

Then he continues with, “Tell me how good it’ll be.” And it all returns, her body going taut with a wave of dread. Oh, god. What? “Tell me, Scully,” he pants against her thigh, taking a little lick of the wetness there. “Tell me.”

 She… does. She closes her eyes and jumps when he touches his tongue to her clit and tells him what she might do if he were to leave her life forever. “I might…” she sucks in a breath and twitches against his mouth. “I might continue teaching… oh. At Quantico.” He hums and laps around the fingers pressing into her. The pleasure stings in her belly. “Maybe I’ll go back into field. Doing, um. I. Doing autopsies, maybe shooting for… S.A.C.”

He pulls his lips from her and she misses them. “VICAP,” he tells her seriously. “They need someone like you. I’ll put a word in.” And he returns, curling his fingers and sucking her clit into his mouth.

This is all the best and worst she’s ever felt in her life. Fox Mulder is good, good at making her feel good, and she continues to float and float until he chooses to bring her back down again, refusing to let her be ungrounded like him. Her senses are sharper everywhere he’s touching her and his tongue is a high voltage battery, poking all the right spots to get her going, singeing, conductive, she feels electric and fried and going dead every second of the way.

“But I’ll miss you, Mulder,” she whimpers, tears filling her eyes suddenly. Or at least they burn with what she thinks are tears – there’s a dryness she can’t shake, not even when she closes them to make them wet again. “I’ll miss you,” she says again, louder, buzzed, and his hair tickles her thigh when he nods. She doesn’t know if that means I’ll miss you too. And she feels it all again, the betrayal, the worry, the panic, feels it closing in even as he gives her everything he’s got, feels claustrophobic and hot all over and like the world is ending. Feels like she’ll never, ever come this hard again. She probably won’t. She’s shaking by the time he lifts his head and brings his fingers to his mouth, and through a haze of blissful, terrible nothing, she sees that he is shaking as well. Lovely, he says with his fingers in his mouth. Lovely luscious luciferous nefarious superstitious hilarious erroneous.

Later, maybe hours, he’s kissing her and apologizing for something and they both laugh. Since when do you say sorry about anything, Scully slurs, waving at him to undo his own pants. He kisses again her and calls her lazy, watches her red red eyes as he strokes himself through the denim and begins working at his fly. I say sorry when I do something wrong. Is this wrong? Scully asks, and she asks because the last twelve months might not have even happened. Nothing might exist. He smiles ruefully, even after he pulls out his cock and she catches the tip of it on her tongue like rain, accepts the salt of him.

… Fox, she calls out some time later with her while breast in his mouth. “Fox,” she says again, as he laughs with her breast still in his mouth. “Fox,” she says again and again and again, because she wants to, because his laughing angers her, because etiquette dictates you should let a woman call you by your first name when you’ve done whatever the hell it is he’s done to her tonight.

“Hm, Scu–wy,” he replies with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, flicking insistently over her nipple. He has a favorite. He’s always choosing favorites, and she grumpily thinks his most favorite thing himself. Pulling away with one hard suck, grins too wide at her. His teeth are so flat. “Hey Scully, I got a riddle. What kind of parents who love their child name their kid Fox?” 

She’s covered in his saliva and it’s drying on her skin. She feels glued to the air. “Mulder…” she frowns, scared.

“They don’t. Haha.” He kisses her over her heart when she chuckles, and she laughs because it’s funny. Fox is an unfortunate name. She’s certain his parents are fine people who love him very much. She’s never met them, but they’re sure going to be angry when he disappears forever, just like his sister. She laughs again as he turns her brain to soup with his clever, sloppy mouth.

There’s a lot of space in her head when the silky head of his cock nudges her clit. He does it again to watch her body tense and release, again to watch it again, and her eyes chase patterns on the ceiling. It’s like pushing a button. He does it again.

“Are you on anything, Scully?” He mumbles, slicking himself through her folds. He watches himself teasingly poke at her entrance and she watches the ceiling. Just the slightest pressure and he’ll slip all the way inside. He asks her again, pulling her out of her mind and back to him.

“Oh, yes,” she says, lifting her hips, like she’d forgotten what they were doing. He groans appreciatively and hauls her up so her ass is pressed to the cradle of his bony groin. She stares at his face. There are wrinkles there, small ones, there’s a scar on his brow she’s never seen before, and this expression is completely new. It’s like they never even met. It’s like she spent an entire year with a person and never even met him. She goes still. “Mulder?” He’s staring at where he’s sliding wetly between her lips, doesn’t hear her. “Mulder?” she cries anxiously, pushing at his biceps. He stops immediately and looks at her face.  
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“Let’s use one.” She bites her lip and avoids his eyes. “Just in case.” He nods against her cheek, kisses the top of her head, and briefly leaves her to go find one. She’s so cold when he’s not on top of her. She pulls his blanket over her body for a moment before remembering he’s coming back to fuck her.  
  
He straddles her with the condom on and pushes in, and the way she stretches to accommodate the girth of him, the way he seems to reach her throat, is all very satisfying in a strange way, like he’s removing a physical emptiness within her that she didn’t know she had. He’s filling it with something and it happens to be enough.

He moves in slow, shallow thrusts, occasionally getting the wrong angle and pushing up against her thigh or ass. It’s nice. She focuses on her breasts jiggling and wonders if that kind of thing is sexy, if she looks tawdry or like she belongs on a plinth, if he really does want her and if she cares.   
  
What if they get caught. Skinner… or… her mom. Walking in here and seeing this, their careful, fannypacked daytrip into lunacy and cheap reassurances. Oh, that felt good. Oh, he’s nothing. He’s not her partner anymore. Who cares what Skinner or her mom thinks. He’s nothing. He’s nothing. He has a machete and he’s chasing caimans in the forest. He’s a black helicopter. He’s a ghost and he’s just meat. Maybe it’s better this way, she thinks, and comes weakly. Maybe it’s better this way and this is for nothing. Maybe a man smoking a cigarette is waiting outside the door to take them both out. He comes, pulses deep and warm inside of her and the condom  and mumbles something profound into her breasts. It takes him forever to finish, maybe he never did. She’s known him forever. She would have said yes if he had asked her again. Isn’t that crazy? Ha ha ha. Isn’t she crazy? Isn’t this all just so wonderfully crazy?

His body gets too heavy for her but she doesn’t notice until he’s moving her up, moving her away from the back of the couch to slip in behind her, pulling the entire lump of her to his sweaty chest and pressing a kiss to the back of her head.

“You, Dana Scully,” he pants, burying his nose in her neck. “You’re the worst little spy I’ve ever known.”

“You’re an idiot, Mulder,” she says, fat tears burning her lips and her neck. She is a giant tear, a blob of salt and water trembling in fear of being split up. “You’re making a terrible decision.”   
  
“Hmm.”  
  
“Samantha,” and she stumbles on the name, because she’s high and it’s a lot of syllables, because she doesn’t say it often, because it’s hard to say. “Isn’t going to be in _Argentina_.”  
  
“Mmmph.”  
  
“I think you need to get help,” she sobs, and he holds her tighter. “I don’t think you’re alright.”   
  
“I’m going to miss you so much,” is the last thing he says, before they both fall asleep.

In the morning she wakes up with a mouth so dry she thinks she tastes blood, upon trying to detach her tongue from the roof. Her whole body hurts in ways that are pleasant and unpleasant. She knows as soon as she sees the sun what they have done, and what is going to happen in only hours time. Summoning up the courage to argue everything just a little more, for old time’s sake, she puts her clothes back on and goes about looking for him.

He’s nowhere to be found in his apartment.

Every man, she knows, is a coward in some way. She stays where she is. She makes herself coffee, pours herself cereal and sleeps through her pounding headache. She takes a shower, reads the paper, makes plans with her mother for dinner. She feeds the fish. His bags are still on the floor, his equipment stacked in the corner, his one-way ticket to El Dorado International Airport sticking out of a world atlas. Flight set to leave at five p.m. She stays well past five, does not leave until well past midnight.

And life continues. She’s learned something about Fox Mulder. He is very, very easy to find, if she ever wants to find him. His credit card statements tell her stories but none of them are of desertion. He never goes back to collect his bags. She waits him out. It is a long, hard wait. Never once does she feel betrayed or embarrassed, though she mourns the girl who would. Something, she knows, is happening inside of him, and now he knows it too. Her body feels empty of worry and most other things.

Then one day a confused academy student comes up to her desk and drops off a post-it note.  
  
“All the guy told me was to give this to you,” she shrugs, flipping back her long blonde ponytail. “I didn’t see his face.”  
 _  
Fountain. 9:30PM  
_ _M_

She slips it in her pocket, gets ready for the next class. At least they’re meeting out in the open this time. 


End file.
